Fun house

He's the man DJ Magazine says "house music loves to hate".
He's renowned as one of dance music's playboys. ("That's definitely
justified," he assures me.) He's had some dodgy marketing gimmicks (a DJ
"title bout" with Fatboy Slim in 1999); had the song titles of his
Killing Puritans album printed in ancient Egyptian, and was
pictured on a single cover with his turntables resting on two naked women
on all fours. And he's made his share of bad records - does anyone
actually own a copy of his Gandhi Khan album?

But just when
you've written him off, Armand Van Helden struts back with another
casually tossed out classic tune.

His latest return is with the massive
single, Hear My Name. There doesn't seem that much to it, with
its wobbly bassline and sexy, kinda sultry, female vocals. Yet it seems to
be making house music fun again.

So why has everyone decided Van Helden
is cool now?

"It's beyond me!" chuckles the quietly spoken yet
talkative New Yorker. "I make the music and then let other people figure
that out. What the public wants to attach to it is a little bizarre to me,
but I know that, at least on this run, I've got the UK back on my team.
That has a lot to do with it. In the dance world, it's really important to
have them on your team. It's almost like if you were a rapper from umm,
Ohio. Well, chances are, you'd better know someone in New
York!"

Although, in the past, Van Helden has had seminal house hits
such as The Funk Phenomena, Witchdoktor, U Don't
Know Me and Flowerz, his last album, 2002's Gandhi
Khan, fared badly.

He'd remixed pop (Jimmy Somerville, Ace of
Base, the Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson, Puff Daddy, Fine Young Cannibals)
and was responsible for three of the best dance remixes ever, with his
reworkings of Tori Amos's Professional Widow, C. J. Bolland's
Sugar Is Sweeter and Sneaker Pimps' Spin Spin
Sugar.

Van Helden decided he needed some time out and spent two
years away from the music business. When it came time to "wind up the
remix machine again", late last year, he was realistic.

"When I told my
management I wanted to start doing remixes again, they said: 'Well, we'll
see what we can do. Your profile isn't exactly on top of the world.' And
I'm like: 'I'm aware of that.' "

Since then, he has turned in strong
remixes for Basement Jaxx and Britney Spears; his Hear My Name
single has rocketed up the charts worldwide; and he's just released a DJ
mix album, New York: A Mix Odyssey, that blends the old (Blondie,
Soft Cell, The Romantics, Yazoo) with the new (three very classy tracks of
his own).

"The thing I've noticed," he says of the album's eclectic
track listing, "is people want to have fun again. They want to be able to
sing the songs. We call it 'cool cheese' in New York. It means people want
to go out and hear records they know."

Armand Van Helden
plays at Room 680, Hawthorn, tonight. New York: A Mix Odyssey is out
through Southern Fried/Sony.